WD10EADS-65M2B0. Its in a computer now and seems to increment its idle count every 5 min. So hopefully I wont need wdidle3. I'm having trouble booting wdidle3 on my x64 system.

I do hardware design for a living, so none of this is tough in that regard. Just getting all my ducks in a row before starting.

The symptoms I'm having are strange. I get long pauses. Yesterday it recorded the Daily Show and then said there was no signal when I tried to play it. It recorded another show at the same time and it played fine. I looked at cable signal strength and it was 100. I re-seated all the rf connectors anyway. Maybe it is reacting to some weird Comcast issues? I want to up the drive anyway, so this is a good excuse to get it done.

WD10EADS-65M2B0. Its in a computer now and seems to increment its idle count every 5 min. So hopefully I wont need wdidle3. I'm having trouble booting wdidle3 on my x64 system.

I do hardware design for a living, so none of this is tough in that regard. Just getting all my ducks in a row before starting.

The symptoms I'm having are strange. I get long pauses. Yesterday it recorded the Daily Show and then said there was no signal when I tried to play it. It recorded another show at the same time and it played fine. I looked at cable signal strength and it was 100. I re-seated all the rf connectors anyway. Maybe it is reacting to some weird Comcast issues? I want to up the drive anyway, so this is a good excuse to get it done.

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That should be a good TiVo drive. I'm running the 2TB version in an S3 HD with no problems and several others in computers.

Go ahead and get a friend to let you use their computer for a few minutes to disable Intellipark and eliminate a possible problem.

The TiVo keeps the drive busy all the time, so Intellipark will never kick in. Until the TiVo needs to do a soft reboot, which will give the drive enough "no signal" time to park the heads which means when the TiVo gets far enough in the boot process to call on the drive it will be asleep, which means the TiVo will reboot and try again, which means the drive will still be asleep, lather, rinse, repeat.

And don't bother going to the bigger drive until you're sure the power supply is okay.

And go ahead and run the WD diagnostics on the original drive.

If it passes the long test, you know you have to look elsewhere for the problem.

A lot. It's a well known problem. I have several bulging caps on one of my S3s. (I haven't opened the other recently.) If they go plotz, I'll drag out the old soldering iron.

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When did you purchase your S3s? Reason I ask, I'm looking to buy a used S3 and was hoping to avoid any bad caps if possible. But of course I'm not sure if Tivo switched cap suppliers upon learning of them being defective.

When did you purchase your S3s? Reason I ask, I'm looking to buy a used S3 and was hoping to avoid any bad caps if possible. But of course I'm not sure if Tivo switched cap suppliers upon learning of them being defective.

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I happened to purchase both my S3's in the fall of 2006. Right around when they came out if i recall. (one the first week, the other ~ month later)

BUT...

I'm under the impression that all the S3's where built during the period when these bad cap's where widely installed (as no one knew until some time later there was a problem).

The S3's themselves got replaced by the TivoHD's around a year later if i recall. so they weren't built over a very long period of time.

So If you are buying a used S3 i think it's a crapshoot. Either be prepared to spend $5-10 yourself and use a soldering iron or budget to spend $100 for the weakness replacement. Maybe you get lucky and it never happens but it seems like a significant percentage will eventually have the problem. (By significant I mean some percentage more than "normal" but certainly not a majority or anything like that)

When did you purchase your S3s? Reason I ask, I'm looking to buy a used S3 and was hoping to avoid any bad caps if possible. But of course I'm not sure if Tivo switched cap suppliers upon learning of them being defective.

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TiVo doesn't have capacitor suppliers.

TiVo has subcontractors who have sub-subcontractors who have distributors who have capacitor suppliers.

As far as I know there's no reliable database of which models built when do or don't have capacitors that might go bad.

The good news is under $10 in parts and a little soldering and you're back in business.

When did you purchase your S3s? Reason I ask, I'm looking to buy a used S3 and was hoping to avoid any bad caps if possible. But of course I'm not sure if Tivo switched cap suppliers upon learning of them being defective.

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2006 and 2007. If it's an oriiginal S3, then it almost surely has caps that may suffer from capacitor disease. That doesn't mean they absolutely will fail, but it's reasonably likely. Replacing a handful of electrolytic caps is just no big deal, though.

I happened to purchase both my S3's in the fall of 2006. Right around when they came out if i recall. (one the first week, the other ~ month later)

BUT...

I'm under the impression that all the S3's where built during the period when these bad cap's where widely installed (as no one knew until some time later there was a problem).

The S3's themselves got replaced by the TivoHD's around a year later if i recall. so they weren't built over a very long period of time.

So If you are buying a used S3 i think it's a crapshoot. Either be prepared to spend $5-10 yourself and use a soldering iron or budget to spend $100 for the weakness replacement. Maybe you get lucky and it never happens but it seems like a significant percentage will eventually have the problem. (By significant I mean some percentage more than "normal" but certainly not a majority or anything like that)

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The capacitor problem in general was already well known by the time the original S3 came on the market (by that time I and thousands of others had BX chipset Pentium II/III boards fail, and S2 TiVos and DirecTivos had already had problems, and that was about the time my mom's computer's power supply went BANG--a small cap didn't bulge, it exploded), but there were millions and millions of the bad caps in the supply chains along with good ones by then.

The S3 HDs are also vulnerable to this problem, that's how I happened to be able to get mine for free, because the power supply was bad.

Did I mention that the LCD monitor I'm using right now was left on the curb down the street for the garbage truck and I happened to see it first (and lcdalternatives had a cap kit for it)?

The capacitor problem in general was already well known by the time the original S3 came on the market (by that time I and thousands of others had BX chipset Pentium II/III boards fail, and S2 TiVos and DirecTivos had already had problems, and that was about the time my mom's computer's power supply went BANG--a small cap didn't bulge, it exploded), but there were millions and millions of the bad caps in the supply chains along with good ones by then....

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interesting- didn't realize it was so long of a period when the mess was ongoing.

Does anyone have the quantities and dimensions on these for an original S3?

Scott

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there's a bunch in there of difference shapes and sizes- not sure that the same ones always go bad. There's different links here on the board of various ones that folks have used in their particular tivo's not sure there are always consisted. When i was looking for myself- I actually found places selling 'tivo capacitor replacement kits' that didn't have the ones i needed for my box.

So I think your best bet is just open your box up and read the specs on the side of any ones that looked bulged and then find them wherever you can.

Does anyone have the quantities and dimensions on these for an original S3?

Scott

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The ones most likely to be bad are on the +12V (yellow wire) or +5V (red wire) outputs (+ lead connected to that, - lead connected to ground--black wire), and likely 2200uF at 16 to 25V, and I read of one person who had a bad 3300uf.

The thing to do is open it up and inspect visually, (and checking the orange, red, and yellow wires with a DC voltmeter on the 20 or 25 volt scale is a good idea as well, look for the orange to be in the neighborhood of +3.3V) and get the specs off of the caps themselves, and remember, when buying replacements of the same capacitance in microFarads and the same voltage rating (which should always be at least the next step up from the voltage of the circuit, but not more than 2 or 3 steps up), also be sure to get ones rated for 105 degrees Celsius and low ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance).

Does anyone have the quantities and dimensions on these for an original S3?

Scott

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And another thing, I've seen a picture of an S3 HD power supply which looked very much like the picture of the OLED S3 supply (except for that extra wire that powers the OLED), and that picture looked different from the supply in my HD, so there may be more than one version of the supply for the 648, so there's no substitution for raising the hood and looking for yourself.

I have been posting in some other threads about my series 3 OLED. I checked out the power supply and its only reading about 7.5 volts so it looks like this is where the problem is.

On visual inspection there does not appear to be any bulging caps (I have seen the pic floating around here). Anybody have any clue which caps are the 12 volt ones? Is there a schematic around anywhere?

My suspicions were correct and I had a power supply starting to fail in one of my 2 S3 OLED (faint wavy lines in video). It finally decided to go into a reboot cycle on Thursday. I opened it up yesterday and found the2 2200uF 6.3V caps (C401/C402) bulging. To verify the power supply was the issue, I swapped in the power supply from my other S3 and it resolved the boot issue and the wavy lines. Interestingly, that one also had 1 bulging capacitor which was the 2200uF 25V cap (C701).

I'm putting together my order today and had planned on replacing all of the 2200uF and 3300uF caps in both power supplies (8 each) as I've seen other cases here of many of those having issues, but thought I would check here to see if there were any opinions on replacing the remaining capacitors (7 each) especially since most if not all seem to have been made by Capxcon.

I have been posting in some other threads about my series 3 OLED. I checked out the power supply and its only reading about 7.5 volts so it looks like this is where the problem is.

On visual inspection there does not appear to be any bulging caps (I have seen the pic floating around here). Anybody have any clue which caps are the 12 volt ones? Is there a schematic around anywhere?

My suspicions were correct and I had a power supply starting to fail in one of my 2 S3 OLED (faint wavy lines in video). It finally decided to go into a reboot cycle on Thursday. I opened it up yesterday and found the2 2200uF 6.3V caps (C401/C402) bulging. To verify the power supply was the issue, I swapped in the power supply from my other S3 and it resolved the boot issue and the wavy lines. Interestingly, that one also had 1 bulging capacitor which was the 2200uF 25V cap (C701).

I'm putting together my order today and had planned on replacing all of the 2200uF and 3300uF caps in both power supplies (8 each) as I've seen other cases here of many of those having issues, but thought I would check here to see if there were any opinions on replacing the remaining capacitors (7 each) especially since most if not all seem to have been made by Capxcon.

Scott

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The yellow wires are connected to the +12 Volt output, the red wires to the +5 Volt output, and the black wires to the power supply's "ground".

All of the capacitors each have 2 wires coming out of the bottom. These are called leads, as in lead a horse to water, not as in lead pipe cinch.

If you are capable of it, remove the power supply board from the TiVo and look at the bottom.

You'll see an area of copper where the yellow wires stick through from the top, a different area where the red wires stick through from the top, and a different different area where the black wires stick through from the top.

If you look at where else those copper areas, called lands, extend to, you'll find where one or two capacitors have one of their leads sticking through the +12V land and the other sticking through the ground land.

This is called being "across" the 12V line, or output.

The same technique will reveal one or more capacitors "across" the 5V line.

There are other capacitors, or "caps", on the power supply board, which are part of other circuits, which are probably fine.

It seems, so far, to be just the caps which have one lead grounded and the other lead connected to either the 12V or 5V output which have developed problems.

As for replacing caps because of what brand they are, CapXon is widely known as CrapXon, but the Series 2 Dual Tuner power supply uses them and I haven't heard of any of that particular model having problems so far, so brand alone is only a possible indicator.

It seems, so far, to be just the caps which have one lead grounded and the other lead connected to either the 12V or 5V output which have developed problems.

As for replacing caps because of what brand they are, CapXon is widely known as CrapXon, but the Series 2 Dual Tuner power supply uses them and I haven't heard of any of that particular model having problems so far, so brand alone is only a possible indicator.

Also, counterfeit versions of reputable brands are being produced.

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I'll ignore the rest since you were replying to 2 posts and the rest appeared to be directed to Dan.

I think that I'll ignore the smaller higher voltage caps and the very large 200V one near the inputs and only replace the ones I'd already indicated except I'll add the 2 470uF and the 1 1000uF ones to to the list.

Regarding counterfeits, you would hope that 3Y would be purchasing directly from the vendor.

I'll ignore the rest since you were replying to 2 posts and the rest appeared to be directed to Dan.

I think that I'll ignore the smaller higher voltage caps and the very large 200V one near the inputs and only replace the ones I'd already indicated except I'll add the 2 470uF and the 1 1000uF ones to to the list.

Regarding counterfeits, you would hope that 3Y would be purchasing directly from the vendor.